


please don't go, i love you so

by mintpearlvoice



Series: real sad dhampir hours [3]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: As a result of the injuries he's suffered, Alucard gets pneumonia. He keeps veering between predicting his own death and thinking that Trevor and Sypha are just hallucinations.Sypha, trying to doctor him, isn't coping so well with all of this.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Series: real sad dhampir hours [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658422
Comments: 17
Kudos: 250





	please don't go, i love you so

**Author's Note:**

> coming at you live from quarantine, where i project onto my favorite characters!

One of the first impressions Sypha got when she met Alucard is: oh, that man would be a terrible patient.

Refusing to admit he’s ill, trying to treat himself, skipping meals to read. The sort of person who only comes for treatment when they’re half dead because anything else would be an imposition. Who never ends up taking all their medicine because, oh, I felt better, or well, there’s people who need it more than me.

Sypha recognizes these characteristics because she herself is a completely terrible patient. Trevor is a good patient because he gets sick and then thinks he’s dying, even if it’s only a cold, he just wants to have his head petted and be fed soup. Incredibly, satisfyingly manageable. Unlike Alucard, who thinks that his medical training means he knows absolutely everything.

Alucard being a good patient- staying in bed, taking what he’s given, not complaining about how he ought to be helping reorganize the hold or restoring the castle roof- scares her more than she’s willing to admit out loud.

“I can’t breathe,” he keeps saying with this bemused, polite expression. Like he’s just noticed. Like he’s just figured it out.

Sypha doesn’t sigh. She doesn’t drop her head into her hands. Instead she just gives the same reply: “The silver chain mechanisms broke some of your ribs. You’ve gotten a cold from not sleeping. It turned into pneumonia.” What she also doesn’t say is: maybe because you refused to tell me you had a cold.

So he laughs, which turns into a cough, which turns into an agonized wince that he glances away from her to try to hide. “But I can’t get pneumonia,” he explains, again. Very helpfully spelling things out for her. “I’m a dhampir.”

This is another conversation that they’ve had so many times.

“Yes, but you’re ill from not having any blood to drink. You’ve been brought down to our level, so to speak.”

“Oh,” he says, like, now I get it, and slumps against the propped-up pillows, his eyes fluttering closed.

And the fact that he’s half-vampire is just enough for Sypha to be completely out of her depth.

Does he have a fever? Should he be drinking something besides blood, and if so, how much? Is he getting enough sleep?

Sypha doesn’t know! She doesn’t know how dhampirs work! Lisa wrote everything in shorthand and her handwriting looks like chicken scratch and she’s only deciphered half of one diary and there’s nothing useful in there at all. Just either things Sypha knows already or things about being in love, which, well, she also sort of knows already. 

Trevor is going to bring her up another stack of notebooks from the castle library. Maybe there’ll be something helpful in there.

(The last time she felt so helpless, she was twelve, watching her parents be executed under a barrage of thrown stones from an angry mob, their bodies jerking until they stopped trying to shield themselves and went still.)

When Alucard isn’t lucid, he’s panicky that he’s going to be killed or that she and Trevor are going to leave, clutching desperately at her hands, begging her to stay. “Even if you’re not real, please don’t leave me. I’m scared.”

Holding him (because nothing else keeps him from getting out of bed) is like holding a statue that won’t stop trembling. His skin is uncannily smooth and cold. She rubs his back to help him breathe, picks at the scabs on her arm to open one of the cuts she’s made to coax him to eat. “Come on, just a few sips.” And “I’m not going to leave you.” And “I won’t let you die.”

She pets his hair and rubs the places on his back that don’t have any broken ribs and he clings to her. Or to Trevor. They can’t both stay with him- they need to get supplies, to repair the damage that Sumi and Taka have done to the hold, to kill night creatures plaguing the surrounding villages- but he gets so restless and frightened when he’s alone. Sypha and Trevor are both in their twenties, and Alucard- though he’s grown faster than a human- is only nineteen. Right now, he seems so fucking young.

(Hearing him call for his parents. That hurts.)

When he’s lucid, he’s quietly miserable, even though he tries to smile and joke with her. He can’t get warm. He’s too hot and can’t cool down. His throat hurts, but he’s thirsty. Sometimes he’ll say things that people normally don’t say unless they think they’re about to die: “Do you know how terribly fond I am of you both?” And “My father has- had- a great deal of money. I want your people to have it when I’m... well. I want you to have it, is all.”

“You’ll be fine,” she says, but he never quite seems convinced. Sometimes she catches Alucard just looking at her and Trevor with this indescribable sorrow. As if he’s trying to memorize their faces. As if he’s scared he’ll close his eyes and never see them again.

When Alucard’s fever spikes, she can at least comfort him. He tells her what he’s frightened of.

And when he’s asleep, or something like it- now, for instance- she doesn’t have to worry that he’ll see her silent tears.

Trevor plops the stack of battered notebooks on a side table and throws himself onto the bed. “How is he?” he asks, voice pitched low.

Trevor barely has medical training. There’s nothing he can do to help that he’s not already doing; trying to embrace some warmth into Alucard’s marble-cold body, coaxing him to have a few sips of blood every couple hours, putting bottles of blood from the cellar in a double boiler to get them up to body temperature.

“He hasn’t gotten worse,” she says cautiously. “I mean, he’s having a hard time breathing still. And he doesn’t always know where he is. Or who I am. But...”

Trevor draws her into a hug, shushing her gently. “You’re a fucking great doctor, okay? If anyone can drag his dumb ass out of danger, it’ll be you. You’re doing all you can.”

That breaks something in her. Something she hasn’t wanted to admit is fragile. It’s just so scary to see Alucard like this. Like he’s mortal. Like they’ve found him again only to maybe lose him at any moment.

Trevor’s chest is the perfect height to sob into. She smooshes her face into his shirt. “I just...” tears leak from his eyes. “I’m so scared for him.”

“I know,” and he kisses the top of her head, holds her until she runs out of tears.

When Alucard wakes, he looks at them with unfocused eyes, hair sticking to his forehead, and declares, “fuck off.”

“And why should we do that, huh?” Trevor teases. But Alucard isn’t in the mood for jokes.

“I want you to go away. You’re not real. Trevor and Sypha won’t come back. They have each other. They don’t need me.” He says this so casually, confidently, like it’s just a fact of the universe.

“We want you, dumbass,” Trevor says, sitting down beside him.

That seems to make Alucard realize he’s not hallucinating.

“Are you...” his gaze flits from Trevor to her and back again, filled with tentative hope. “Are you both really here?”

“We’re here,” Sypha says, stroking his hand.

“I don’t want to die alone. Don’t leave again. Please don’t leave me.” He sounds so vulnerable and afraid, like a scared child.

We’re never going to leave you, Sypha thinks. What she says is: “You’re not going to die.”

“Taka and Sumi... if they know you’re here...” His eyes shine with sudden tears. “I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“We killed those motherfuckers,” Trevor says gently. Which isn’t exactly true, but it’s what will make Alucard rest the easiest.

“Okay,” he says, and goes boneless, sagging against Trevor, as if it takes him so much energy to breathe that he can’t bother with any other tasks.

“Just keep breathing,” Trevor tells him, stroking his hair. “That’s all you have to do. We’ll take care of everything else.”

Instead of asking what’s wrong with him, or if they’re really here, or where his parents are, or any of the million questions he fights his lungs to ask over and over again, he just closes his eyes. Relaxes into Trevor rubbing little circles into his back.

“You get some sleep, too. I’ll wake you up if he needs anything,” Trevor says, his voice low.

She doesn’t want to sleep. Doesn’t want to lose even a moment of being near them both. Instead she rests her head on Alucard’s chest and listens to the slow, steady rattle of his breathing. Maybe she doesn’t believe in god anymore, not after everything she’s seen, not after all the atrocities committed in his name. But she still prays.

Don’t go. Don’t leave us. Please don’t go.

**Author's Note:**

> might write a sequel where alucard is healed up and has actually good sex with people who care about him for the first time in his life ? ALSO this hasn't come up yet but i headcanon alucard as being trans. cause i'm trans.   
> peace outtie


End file.
